Introduction
In 1993, in the suburban Windsor, Ontario, bedroom of a 23-year-old neo-Nazi
skinhead1 named George Burdi,
"Kill all the niggers and you gas all the jews
Kill a gypsy and a coloured too
You just killed a kike
Don't it feel right
Goodness gracious, darn right"
-- From the hate rock song "Third Reich" by RaHoWa"
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Resistance Records was
born. Initially a fledgling, one-man hate-music distribution operation
with a handful of album titles, the small company grew quickly into
the number one distributor of skinhead music2 in the
United States.
In 1997, Resistance Records was temporarily brought to its knees
by both an American tax dispute and Canadian prosecution for distributing
materials that promote hatred. But in 1998, Willis A. Carto, the
anti-Semitic leader of Liberty Lobby, and his partner, Todd Blodgett,
acquired the business and revived it. By the next year, however,
Resistance changed hands again, this time purchased by William Pierce,
founder and head of the anti-Semitic National Alliance and author
of 1978's The Turner Diaries, the white power revolutionary
blueprint thought to have inspired the Oklahoma City bombing.
With Resistance
Records forging ahead as arguably the most lucrative hate enterprise
in the country, old-school racists are viewing violent skinhead
culture in a new light. As hate rock bands merge into the mainstream
heavy metal music arena, white supremacist leaders are coming to
see the music as the most powerful recruiting tool to hit their
movement in decades.
Next: Hate-for-Profit
1
Neo-Nazi skinheads' views are very much a mixed bag. Some believe
in orthodox Nazi ideology, parroting the rhetoric of Hitler and
his propagandists. Others adhere to a mixture of racism, populism,
ethnocentrism and ultranationalist chauvinism, along with a hodgepodge
of Nazi-like attitudes. There is thus a range of views that can
fit comfortably within what we are calling the neo-Nazi skinhead
movement.
2 Not all skinheads with shaved heads or closely cropped hair are neo-Nazis.
There are many young people across the globe who call themselves
skinheads and eschew bigotry (some are actively anti-racist). They
may look the same as their racist counterparts without
the Nazi insignia and follow many of the same fashions,
including a taste for "oi" music, beer and violence. Indeed, both
types of skinheads have even been known to attack each other. The
terms "skinhead" and "skinhead music," when used in this report,
refer to the neo-Nazi or racist variety, unless otherwise specified.
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